Mind Engineering

For the past 25 years, scientists have challenged conventional views of evolution and have developed revolutionary theories with profound implications. Fritjof Capra has been at the forefront of this revolution and now, in The Web of Life, he offers a brilliant synthesis of these exciting breakthroughs.

Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger were friends and comrades-in-arms against what they considered the most preposterous aspects of quantum physics: its indeterminacy. Einstein famously quipped that God does not play dice with the universe, and Schrödinger is equally well known for his thought experiment about the cat in the box who ends up "spread out" in a probabilistic state, neither wholly alive nor wholly dead.

The surprising truth about how the things our ears hear affect what's between them. Every day, we are surrounded by millions of sounds - ambient ones like the rumble of the train and the hum of air conditioner, as well as more attention-grabbing sounds, such as human speech, music, and sirens. But how do we process what we hear every day? And how does it affect our brains and our minds?

Over the last 50 years, humanity has developed an extraordinary shared utility: the global positioning system. Omnipresent, free, and available to all, GPS powers everything from your phone to the Internet to the Mars Rover. Greg Milner tells the sweeping story of GPS, from its conceptual origins as a bomb guidance system to its present ubiquity.

Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning - a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things - from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs.

Analyzing brainwaves, the imperceptible waves of electricity surging across your scalp, has been possible for nearly a century. But only now are neuroscientists becoming aware of the wealth of information brainwaves hold about a person’s life, thoughts, and future health. From the moment a reclusive German doctor discovered waves of electricity radiating from the heads of his patients in the 1920s, brainwaves have sparked astonishment and intrigue, yet the significance of the discovery and its momentous implications have been poorly understood.

Mind Openers 2.0 is the second installment in a two-part set. It takes a fresh look at relativity, cosmology, and quantum theory by imagining a “sandbox universe”, in which space and time are treated as tangible and visualizable phenomena. In addition to providing an intuitive feel for the physics, the model makes a number of acutely unexpected predictions. The author is a geophysicist (MSc, fellow of geoscientists, Canada) and educator, who specializes in translating scientific material for the non-expert.

To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy. But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact. This blinds us to the physical realities of mental function. We ignore bodily influences on our psychology, from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut, and overlook the ways that the environment affects our behavior, via factors varying from subconscious sights and sounds to the weather.

Accessible in its wit and clarity, Touch explores scientific advances in the understanding of touch that help explain our sense of self and our experience of the world. From skin to nerves to brain, the organization of the body's touch circuits powerfully influences our lives - affecting everything from consumer choice to sexual intercourse, tool use to the origins of language, chronic pain to healing. Interpersonal touch is crucial to social bonding and individual development.

Elegantly written and deeply grounded in personal experience - works by Oliver Sacks come to mind - Physical Intelligence gives us a clear, illuminating examination of the intricate, mutually responsive relationship between the mind and the body as they engage (or don’t engage) in all manner of physical action. Ever wonder why you don’t walk into walls or off cliffs? How you decide if you can drive through a snowstorm? How high you are willing to climb up a ladder to change a lightbulb?

The Age of Genius explores the eventful intertwining of outward event and inner intellectual life to tell, in all its richness and depth, the story of the 17th century in Europe. It was a time of creativity unparalleled in history before or since, from science to the arts, from philosophy to politics. Acclaimed philosopher and historian A. C. Grayling points to three primary factors that led to the rise of vernacular (popular) languages in philosophy, theology, science, and literature.

Whether you're aware of it or not, you've been born into a system of degeneration that harms the planet and every person and creature alive. In order for transformation to occur, says author Jordan Rubin, "You must make a decision to take steps today to become part of the solution". Planet Heal Thyself will teach you how to start a "revolution of regeneration" in the areas of health and nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food production as well as economic prosperity and abundance.

Embracing the Wide Sky is a unique and brilliantly imaginative portrait of how we think, learn, remember and create, brimming with personal insights and anecdotes, and explanations of the most up-to-date, mind-bending discoveries from fields ranging from neuroscience to psychology and linguistics. This is a profound and provocative book that will transform our understanding and respect for every kind of mind.

The Mind of the Market will change the way we think about the economics of everyday life. Drawing on research from neuroeconomics, Michael Shermer explores what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and how trust is established in business. Utilizing experiments in behavioral economics, Shermer shows why people hang on to losing stocks and failing companies, why business negotiations often disintegrate into emotional tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy.

In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom - one of today's preeminent thinkers - offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution; it is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.

In the fascinating new audiobook from the best-selling author of Humanology, Luke O'Neill explores some of the big human questions and tells us what science has to say about topics such as gender, addiction and euthanasia. With his trademark easy wit and clever pop-culture references, Luke is a serious scientist with an amazing knack of making science accessible. If you are curious about us, this bizarre animal called the human being, this is a book for you.

Fritjof Capra and the Systems View of Life (Great Minds, Book 3): 2017 Revised, Updated, and Reformatted Edition is a passionate study about the great contemporary physicist and a review of all of his published books, including extensive quotes. The author considers Fritjof Capra as one of the most important authors on new science and systems research and considers as genius Capra's unique gift to formulate and explain complex scientific and philosophical insights and interrelations in a way that the educated listener can understand.

As Charles Darwin suggested more than a century ago, the differences between animals and humans are of degree and not of kind. Not long ago, ethologists denied that animals had emotions or true intelligence. Now, we know that rats laugh when tickled, magpies mourn as they cover the departed with greenery, female whales travel thousands of miles for annual reunions with their gal pals, seals navigate by the stars, bears hum when happy, and crows slide down snowy rooftops for fun.

The idea that plants have a mind of their own has been a prominent feature of some Indigenous narratives, literary works, and philosophical discourses. Recent scientific research in the field of plant cognition similarly highlights the capacity of botanical life to discern between options and learn from prior experiences or, in other words, to think. The Mind of Plants offers an accessible account of the idea of “the plant mind” by bringing together short essays and poems on plants and their interactions with humans.

Are you frustrated or disenchanted by the results of your Agile approach? Does Agile sound like a good idea, but you're not sure how to explain it beyond roles, practices, and meetings? Is your team going through the motions, but it's still business as usual? The missing piece is the Agile mindset - the thinking that makes Agile processes work.